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Google launches new Google Search status dashboard

Written on December 14, 2022 at 10:40 am, by admin

Google has launched a new status dashboard, this dashboard is for Google Search at status.search.google.com.

Google Search status dashboard. The Google Search status dashboard will show you if there is an outage or issue with Google Search. Specifically, Google will confirm if there is an issue with crawling, indexing, or serving in Google Search.

Google wrote, “as we head into 2023, we want to introduce another tool for the public to understand the most current status of systems which impact Search—crawling, indexing, and serving.”

Issues are rare. Google said, “while system disruptions are extremely rare, we want to be transparent when they do happen.” And yes, we have reported many issues over the years with Google Search around indexing, crawling, and serving. But now Google has a way to report it within its Google Status Dashboard system as it does for Google Ads and many other products.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of this dashboard:

How it works. Google explained, “This dashboard reports widespread issues occurring in the last 7 days, with some details and the current status of the incident. A widespread issue means there’s a systemic problem with a Search system affecting a large number of sites or Search users. Typically these kinds of issues are very visible externally, and internally the SREs’ monitoring and alerting mechanisms are working behind the scenes to flag the issues.”

“Once we confirm with SREs that there’s an ongoing, widespread issue in Search, we aim to post an incident on the dashboard within an hour, and consecutive updates to the incident within 12 hours. Unlike with a traditional automated dashboard, our global staff reports these updates. The start time of the incident is generally when we managed to confirm the issue,” Google added.

Why we care. We sometimes, rarely, see issues with Google Search around indexing, crawling, and serving but we have to reach out to Google to confirm the issue. Now, Google will post those confirmations on the dashboard, as it does for many of its other products and services.

The post Google launches new Google Search status dashboard appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

4 main types of local links and how to earn them

Written on December 14, 2022 at 10:40 am, by admin

Getting backlinks is like getting regular exercise. It’s time-consuming, and the results aren’t immediate, but a daily workout contributes to your long-term health. 

Similarly, regularly working on a solid backlink profile builds authority for your website and contributes to organic ranking growth.

In local SEO, getting backlinks is particularly challenging. Small businesses often don’t have the same resources as an enterprise organization for links. There’s not enough time, money, and energy to build a local backlink profile. 

However, limited resources don’t have to limit local link building opportunities.

Often, local businesses do more to support local link growth than they realize. By defining the types of local links, we can reflect on an organization’s values. 

Typically, local links are less about developing stellar PageRank and more about building relationships in the community.

4 common types of local links

These are the most common types of local links:

• Citations and data aggregators.
• Community engagement.
• National and local awards.
• Relevant local content, campaigns, tools, reports, and studies.

Each type of local link requires a slightly different approach, but they all contribute value to the local community. 

Citations and aggregators help customers find phone numbers and addresses, while local awards help customers trust the business. 

Achieving local links that will truly impact growth requires a shift in mindset. 

Instead of thinking about links as an SEO “to-do” item, think about them as an opportunity to connect with your neighbors. 

The best local businesses are known less for their SEO and more for their community involvement. 

A company that raises funds for a local charity or sports team can receive more local recognition than a business with great title tags. 

A company that does both of these things can win at local SEO.

Let’s dive more into each type of local link below.

1. Citations and data aggregators

Local business citations, also known as online directories, are a well-known local link building tactic. Here, a business’s basic information is listed across websites that resemble a phone book.

The SEO theory behind citations: by submitting location information across a network of online profiles, a local business establishes online consistency for its name, address, and phone number (also known as “NAP consistency”). 

Google’s Knowledge Graph uses this directory information to confirm the business information and accurately share it with users.

Common examples of online directories include: 

• Online phone books (i.e., Whitepages)
• GPS submissions (i.e., Garmin)
• Voice search (i.e., Siri)
• Secondary search engines (i.e., Microsoft Bing, Yahoo)
• Travel websites (i.e., Airbnb, TripAdvisor)

As a search engine, Google attempts to provide accurate, credible information for every single search query. 

Listing your business information with local citations helps Google and other search engines achieve this goal.

Data aggregators

Rather than spending hours submitting to online directories and updating them, an organization can pay for data aggregators that automate most of the process. 

Three companies offer a “bulk submission” service, placing business citations across a specific network of online directories.

• Data Axle
• Neustar
• Foursquare

Each of these organizations submits to a different list of online directories, though there can be some overlap.

For example, Data Axle and Neustar might submit to Whitepages, while only Neustar might submit to Apple. 

The exact list of backlinks generated by each aggregator is unknown, but a business typically receives anywhere from 25-100+ backlinks from each one (some of them overlapping).

Aggregator resellers

Many SEO agencies and SEO tools include a service that will submit to all three data aggregators.

For example, BrightLocal submits to the three aggregators listed above and some smaller vendors (i.e., Yellow Pages Network). 

Some of these citation link building services are available for a yearly fee, while others have a one-time fee. 

SEO impact of local citations

Local SEO experts have noted a downward trend in focus around local citations. In the 2021 Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors survey, top industry contributors were surveyed on which local ranking factors make the most impact. 

The score for local citations was among the lowest impact ranking factors in 2020 and 2021. Survey participants stated they achieved limited growth from citation submissions, indicating high effort for minimal results.

Ultimately, the value of local citations is relative to other SEO efforts and the age of the business.

• A brand-new, first-time business needs to get the basics set up to expand its recognition on search.
• An older business might need an update to its citations to ensure they’re accurate.

While it might not be clear how many local citations help, they are a fundamental piece of the local link building process for years. 

Online directories are an attainable, straightforward way to gain local links or update existing directory information because all a business needs is a one-time fee, an address, and a phone number.

2. Community engagement

Getting local links can show your organization’s goodwill to both Google and the greater community. 

In “A Christmas Carol,” Ebenezer Scrooge runs a bookkeeping business that is seemingly cold, calculating, and heartless. He is known by the larger community as a miser. 

This bad attitude gives Scrooge’s business a negative reputation, leaving him counting profits in a dark, empty room. 

In today’s business ecosystem, similar community perceptions can play a role in local SEO. 

If a business gives to and participates within its community, that business is talked about, people engage with the brand, and the conversation continues online.

By investing in the local community, an organization can organically grow its backlink profile and achieve SEO growth.

Types of community engagement and backlinks include: 

• Local sponsorships.
• Local events.
• Scholarships.
• Charities.
• Volunteering.

All of these local link building activities speak to one central facet – community. By investing in its community, a business is investing in itself. 

To get started with community engagement, circle back to your organization’s values. What is most important to the company? 

Principles such as service, leadership, communication, and education could be applied to a local initiative with link building potential. 

For example, a local attorney’s office might value clear communication as its guiding principle. 

To channel this principle, the attorney could lead a local seminar on citizens’ researching their rights around an upcoming zoning proposal.

This seminar might result in a backlink to the attorney’s site from the local paper that announces upcoming local events.

SEO impact of community engagement links

It might seem time-consuming to spend additional time or resources on volunteering or a sponsorship, but the return on investment can be significant.

When a local newspaper publishes an article about a $500 scholarship or sports team sponsorship from an organization, that organization is receiving a backlink or mention from one of the most reputable websites in its community. 

This recognition builds expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) with search engines, contributing to the website’s organic ranking growth. 

When competitors rank because of a strong local backlink profile, community engagement is a reliable path to outranking them because it attracts multiple stakeholders who might share links. 

A single contribution to charity might result in links from personal blogs, the organization that received the donation, and a local newspaper. 

Additionally, community involvement doesn’t necessarily need to result in a link.

Sometimes a mention of the brand name is enough to build the organization’s reputation and improve its online credibility. 

SEO practitioners have started to think beyond link building, including it in the larger practice of “off-page SEO,” which weighs brand mentions almost equally to links.  

It isn’t easy to measure the complete SEO impact of community participation, but everything we know about search engines indicates that it makes a difference. 

By investing in community engagement, an organization does more than improve rankings – it joins a conversation.

3. National and local awards

Receiving an award results in more than a plaque on the wall or feeling good about your business practices. An award is a trust signal. 

When choosing a vendor, customers rely on awards and community recognition to decide on the right fit for their needs. 

Types of award opportunities for a small business include: 

• National accreditation (i.e., Better Business Bureau).
• Local trade organization awards/certifications.
• Local publication awards (i.e., “Best of Phoenix”).
• Local environmental awards.
• Local awards for community involvement.

The first step to getting locally recognized is researching local awards in an organization’s line of business and local area. 

A common starting point is the Better Business Bureau. Getting accredited by this large national organization allows customers to see an organization’s credibility. 

Another opportunity to check for awards is the local Chamber of Commerce, which serves as a resource for businesses hoping to connect with the greater community.

Once organizations find an award that aligns with their values, they can develop a plan around the best path to receiving that award. 

Sometimes the organization has already achieved many existing aspects of the award, and trying to win is as simple as applying or reaching out to the award company. 

When winning the award isn’t an immediate scenario, an organization can develop a company-wide initiative. 

Leadership can announce the goal, sharing how it aligns with the organization’s values. From there, a specific team can review why past award winners were recognized. 

By developing a plan around the core elements of the award, the organization’s existing successes, and new initiatives to meet award criteria, organizations take a proactive approach to winning the award and achieving backlinks.

SEO impact of national and local awards

It has been theorized that search engines consider awards as a measure of an organization’s expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. 

In the Search Quality Rater Guidelines (the primary resource for studying E-A-T and relevance in SEO), Google tasks its raters with researching a business’s trustworthiness through the awards it has received:

“News articles and informational articles can help you learn about a company and may include information specific to reputation, such as awards and other forms of recognition, or also controversies and issues.”

Achieving local links through awards involves improving a business as a whole. 

Rather than being segmented in its own SEO channel, local link building can be incorporated into an organization’s broader goals. 

A small business can use community and organizational values to improve its products and services, build long-lasting relationships, and achieve local links. 

When small businesses pursue the improvement of their operations, SEO growth is a secondary benefit.

4. Relevant local content and studies

In addition to leading the community through stewardship and award recognition, an organization can become a thought leader by sharing resources about its practice area with local citizens. 

Types of local content will vary based on the type of business or the links desired. Some examples of local content for link building promotion include: 

• Gathering information about the average age of a home in the area and its energy consumption.
• Localizing a national article about a consumer’s average savings account to the local neighborhood’s average savings account.
• Interviews with the company’s top experts about their day-to-day challenges.
• A mental health initiative for all neighboring businesses.

These are examples of content that can be published directly on the website, which may receive attention and backlinks from third-party websites. 

Newspapers, local blogs, community forums, and other online resources always look for the latest information to share with their readers. 

An organization can drive the conversation by publishing content that is new, relevant, and helpful.

When brainstorming ideas for local content, an organization should encourage all and any ideas. Creativity is essential to local content promotion and the links it can achieve. 

SEO impact of local content and case studies

The results of a local content initiative vary widely based on subject matter and audience. However, the desired outcome is always the same: backlinks and brand mentions. 

The theory behind local content for backlinks posits that if the content is interesting enough, people will talk about it. 

When an organization publishes interesting content and shares it with local news outlets and consumers, it will receive backlinks and brand mentions. 

These backlinks and brand mentions will improve E-A-T and organic rankings. 

When the value of local content is apparent, the organic growth from that content will also be apparent. 

How to get local links

So, how do you get local links? 

The path to local links should look less like a hunting expedition and more like a garden. Plant some seeds and see which sprout:

• Establish a citation baseline.
• Reflect on company values.
• Channel company values into a multi-faceted link building strategy.
• Execute strategy and achieve links.
• Review what is working, what is not working, and repeat.

Targeting local links based on community needs is an opportunity to outrank local competitors ranking by default. 

By integrating your backlink strategy with existing values, the organization connects with the fundamental essence of local link building – caring.

Caring is the essence of local backlinks because it means that your organization doesn’t want links for the sake of links. 

• It cares about having the right information. 
• It cares about giving back to the community. 
• It cares about offering reliable services and has been recognized for that. 
• It cares about moving the industry forward and being the best at what it does.

Caring and local link building are one and the same.

So while it might seem daunting to pursue these types of local links, the process is less about developing an SEO checklist and more about reflection. 

If your organization has already spent some effort defining what matters, then it will be that much easier to make an impact within the community and receive local links.

The post 4 main types of local links and how to earn them appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

After the content audit: 7 steps for improving content

Written on December 13, 2022 at 6:40 am, by admin

While we may all have goals when we start producing content, it can be easy to stray away from them or stop tracking them over time. 

As your website grows, it’s recommended you run a content audit periodically to allow yourself to reset your goals and expectations and align your content with your current business KPIs. 

You can greatly expand your content marketing campaign and boost your business outcomes by aligning these goals and acting on information in your content audit. 

Performing a content audit is only one step toward improving your marketing performance.

To truly see results from your efforts, you must actively fix any problems in your audit and align your strategy with your established goals. 

In this article, you’ll learn seven ongoing steps that can help you improve content after your audit is complete and optimize new content to reflect your business goals. 

1. Establish clear KPIs

Generally, the first step of any content audit will be a review of your business goals to help you benchmark content performance moving forward. 

After your audit, it’s essential to benchmark these KPIs and track various fields of progress in your analytics. 

There are several metrics to use for this, including:

• Traffic/pageviews
• Organic keyword position
• Backlinks
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Time on page

Once you’ve established a list of KPIs for benchmarking and comparison to the content audit, you can discover strategies to improve existing content based on your intended outcomes.

For example, are you looking to rank for higher volume keywords that bring in more traffic? Are you looking for less competitive ones with higher click-through rates? 

Furthermore, KPIs can be used to model new content that reflects your underlying business strategy. 

2. Prioritize technical fixes

In your research, you may uncover a technical issue causing your content to rank below its potential, such as page speed, indexing or crawling issues. 

Resolving these problems on your backend is an essential first step to ensuring that all present and future content can rank higher in organic search. 

3. Identify opportunities for wins

Now it’s time to dive deeply into your audit and identify potential opportunities for easy wins. 

For example, in this content audit guide, the author divides her content into several categories, including underperforming, thin, and outdated content. 

These categories allow you to implement easy changes, such as updating body text to reflect new changes or to make content more engaging to improve your content’s relative performance. 

Of course, you can always get more granular, conduct a backlink audit on underperforming pieces of content, and build external and internal links. 

Look for content ranking for “striking distance” keywords and make changes, based on the data, that will help it move to the first page. 

I also recommend writing new topics for high-volume keywords you might be ranking for in Position 41 or lower. 

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4. Redirect old and underperforming pages

Throughout your content audit, you might find several URLs with duplicate content and also some content that is just outdated or irrelevant. 

In that case, I recommend implementing a 301 redirect to a similar page to help give that page some link authority. 

However, consider being tentative about 301 redirects, as you might create more problems for your developer if you abuse them too much. 

5. Revamp old content to follow new guidelines

Updating content allows you to win any opportunities you found during your audit. Generally, I like to let the data inform me. 

For instance, if I find some content that is outperforming others and leading to better traffic, I might update my internal linking strategy to promote this page.

Ultimately, I recommend using content audits as a guide and a reset to develop a new content calendar and outline strategy. 

Create a healthy mix of new and revamped content to give you a boost in Google search.

And if it makes sense, I like reformatting or transferring content into a new medium. 

Conducting podcasts around existing content on your site or adding a video on underperforming pages could give them a much-needed boost. 

6. Promote new and revamped content

After updating your content, you’ll need to promote it to give it traction. I recommend the following promotional strategies for any piece of content:

• Sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
• Building links.
• Tagging an influencer.
• Sharing in a newsletter.
• Advertising over search or Facebook.
• Syndicating content.

By getting more eyeballs and traffic to your pages, you can use your content to create better results for your website. 

7. Monitor your analytics

You must continuously track your analytics and ensure your content is performing to your preferred standards. 

Your analytics will give you an excellent benchmark to measure your content’s performance and give you ideas about where your content is underperforming or lacking. 

Similar to everything in life, there is no get-rich-quick scheme or something you can buy to make your content rank better. 

Instead, content marketing requires an ongoing commitment and a holistic approach, leveraging the best practices from technical SEO and link building to perform at its best. 

However, with a content audit, you are one step closer to achieving your business goals using content marketing. Now, you just need to start doing the heavy lifting.  

The post After the content audit: 7 steps for improving content appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

6 SEO considerations for a successful international expansion

Written on December 13, 2022 at 6:40 am, by admin

You might have detected a great opportunity based on a fair amount of traffic to your site from a specific country. Perhaps a PR campaign went viral, and now users worldwide look for your product, creating a constant demand for it. 

Whatever the reason, an expansion, a new product launch or a diversification will always have to be supported by a prompt, detailed analysis of every element not only in the wider strategy but in SEO, too.

Entering a new market or going global comes with potentially significant rewards and considerable risks.  

Search marketers usually agree on what factors contribute to market entrants’ success, including:

• Extensive keyword and competitor research.
• Target market persona analysis.
• Analysis of new entrants.
• Self-contained ecosystems to allow paid and digital PR campaign planning.

These studies will determine whether the brand can enter a new market, if the timing is right, or if there’s an opportunity to scale. Essentially, these are the main factors of success in any market entry or global launch.

In this article, you will discover six elements that worked for me when entering new markets while working for previous clients. 

Before we dive in, it is important to note that every brand, agency and market is different. There is no single checklist that should be applied to your work.

Adapt this and other advice to your strategy and ensure it is aligned with wider business goals. Most importantly, finalizing a strategy involves working closely with other departments in your organization. 

1. Market profitability assessment

International keyword research

In-depth analysis and keyword research in your target market is crucial to your international expansion strategy, as they will:

• Enable you to gather information on the search volume and traffic from words and phrases related to your product or service in the original languages of new markets. 
• Show you potential variations in the language used (remember that translation and localization are not enough now). 

Aside from search traffic, keyword difficulty is an important indicator since it specifies how competitive your keywords can be in various languages, regions and language fusions.

This article on international keyword research and intent is a great start.

Important tip: If you plan to translate your current set of keywords, make sure they are not only translated and localized but also they are aligned to how people search in your target country.

For example, in the north of Mexico and some parts of the Southern U.S., “Spanglish” is common. This means that in this part of the world, you will find many queries are done by mixing English and Spanish.

Take the fashion term “maxi dress” as an example. In Spain, people would search for “vestido largo,” whereas in some parts of Mexico, people might search for “maxi vestido.” 

The example below is from Zara Mexico, where the way people search has influenced how products and categories are presented. As mentioned, the products are called “vestido maxi.”

Whereas in Zara Spain, similar products are called “vestido largo.”

In-depth international keyword research will:

• Give you an idea of the resources and capabilities you must have to enter the new market.
• Help you decide whether you are ready to expand or if it is better to wait. 

Google Analytics data

Analyze your top converting traffic sources using Google Analytics (or other tracking software). Pay attention to the areas around the world where your brand is getting constant traffic. 

While traffic is important, make sure to analyze conversions and revenue before deciding to expand to a new market.

Conduct an in-depth report, as this will help determine whether you can satisfy the demand emerging from these new countries.

Will you need a new warehouse? If you can’t have a new warehouse, you may need a communication strategy to emphasize delivery times. 

Along with this, you might consider an incentive campaign to increase conversions if your delivery times might affect them.

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2. Social networks in the target market

This is one of the most important steps when entering a new market.

You might be thinking that this is not related to SEO. It might not be at first glance.

However, it will determine the strategy for paid media and the type of content you should produce to increase brand awareness and gain links. 

Why are social networks important?

Because a large percentage of online consumers start their purchase journey with brand research on social networks.

However, is important to note that:

• Not all consumers will always start their brand research on social networks.
• If they start on social networks, it is not always TikTok.

The chart below shows several age brackets and where they typically start their brand research, especially when making a high-value purchase. 

This information is useful when planning:

• The types of content to create for digital PR.
• The types of influencers to work with.
• The correct paid media channels for launching in a new market.

In some instances, the paid campaign will be on social networks, and in others, it will be more effective via Google Ads.

It is crucial to identify the main social networks used in the target country you are looking to expand in, especially for the age brackets that start their brand research on social. In some countries, it could be TikTok, while in others, it could be Instagram. 

3. Hreflang

The hreflang is a little snippet of code that looks like this: rel="alternate" hreflang="X“.

An hreflang tag should be added if your site has the same content in various languages.

In a global context, the hreflang element assists search engines in determining which URL version of your site should be provided to visitors from a given region or who speak a specific language.

Hreflang contributes toward a good user experience as it:

• Helps deliver a search result in the location and language the user made the query. 
• Prevents duplicate content issues.

Below, I have included some ideas to consider when implementing hreflang. 

• Valid hreflang attributes.
• Return links.
• Hreflang link to self.
• Hreflang elements in your <head>.
• Hreflang HTTP headers.
• An XML sitemap hreflang implementation.
• Tools: hreflang generator, hreflang sitemap generator.

4. URL structure

Similar to the hreflang principle of serving your users with results relevant to their language and location, the choice of the URL structure is crucial as it will be an indication for both search engines and users.

Here are the differences and uses of common URL structures: ccTLD, gTLD, subdomain and parameter.

There’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to URL structure. The choice should depend on your objectives and goals. 

However, you should consider the limitations of your CMS. This is one reason why you might see some brands still using parameters. While using them is acceptable, parameters are not the best option. 

5. Shopping cart localization

Translating and localizing content is not enough. More than that, content should be aligned with common uses and language phenomena in your target country (i.e., Spanglish).

This principle also applies to your website’s shopping cart. When a customer is about to finish a purchase, it’s vital to consider the following:

• Currency: The currency must be the same as the user’s country.
• Language: It must be the same as your user’s country.
• Payment methods: Make sure you include Apple Pay (crucial), Google Pay, various credit cards and payment methods such as Klarna and Paypal.
• Information on delivery and choices for faster and cost-effective delivery methods.
• Discount code section.

If your target customers are between the ages of 16 to 34, consider that they are 80% more likely to pay with Apple Pay than with other methods. 

Not having the preferred payment method, incorrect language, and unclear information will lead to cart abandonment. 

6. International digital PR

Establishing a country-specific link strategy for each market is a must. Depending on your brand’s niche, you might be limited to a few tactics. 

If you are in the food, fashion, sports or gifts sectors, the best course of action will be to identify the most used social network by your target audience and work with influencers in those appropriate channels. 

Working with a relevant influencer in an appropriate social network and running paid campaigns are the best ways to enter a new market while you lay the groundwork for your organic efforts.

The beauty of digital PR is that there are plenty of opportunities to increase brand awareness and earn links. 

If there isn’t a traditional PR team in your brand, you can focus on these tactics:

• Brand monitoring.
• Events.
• Content for promotion.
• Influencers.

To build valuable partnerships, it’s crucial always to adjust your approach to the customs of the individual market.

A sample approach can go like this:

• Identify influencers on TikTok. 
• Establish collaborations.
• Create assets to promote on media outlets.
• Work with paid Media.
• Earn local links to add relevance and boost trust.

Read “Using digital PR to earn links and rank for your target keywords” to get started.

You can also refer to Newspaper Map, an interactive map that shows you online outlets available in every region you could imagine in the world. 

When you click the pink bubbles, it will display a link to a specific online newspaper. 

The following is an example when zooming into central London, where you’ll see the Financial Times’ office location.

Once you have identified your media outlet of choice and wish to connect to a journalist to request a link or a collaboration, you can use RocketReach (a tool where you can manually get the contact details of journalists). 

Go global with the right SEO approach

The most common causes of failure when expanding include:

• Impulsivity. Making expensive decisions based on temporarily high product demand from a specific location.
• Common biases. 
• Insufficient analysis.
• Poor strategy.

Your SEO team can have the best strategy. However, not working with other teams and having poor negotiation skills may lead to friction, poor implementation, and failure within the first two years of the expansion.

To avoid costly mistakes, it is important to do an in-depth study per element mentioned in this article – plus more. 

Don’t base your expansion strategy on a checklist. Adapt resources to the knowledge of your business and the organization’s overall plan.

The following table shows the common biases in a market entry and ideas on how to tackle them. 

Core market entry analysis	Description	Common biases	How to tackle
Value Proposition	Business model. Do I have the necessary resources?	Impulsivity and egocentric interpretation of resources.	Determine the degree of variations in required capabilities for the new market.
Market size	Geographic area to expand, and how much demand is there?	Overconfidence, Anchoring and inadequate initial value.	Make decisions based on forecasts made on competitors in the target market.
Competition	Existing competitors in the market Potential entrants	Competitive blindspots	In-depth analysis of possible competitors and related sectors to our target market.
Estimates of market share revenue	Expectations of sales for our offering	Failing to consider the competitive response of existing competitors	Conduct in-depth competitor research.
Detailed cost estimates	Costs of input, distribution and economies to be faced	Underestimation of costs	Once all your cost plans are complete, it is advisable to hire an external consultant or auditor to review them to determine feasibility and potential risks.

Remember that the success factors in an expansion are:

• Timing.
• Ability to leverage assets.
• Scalability. 
• And, more than anything, work as a team!

The post 6 SEO considerations for a successful international expansion appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Programmatic SEO: Your missing link to 1M+ sessions

Written on December 13, 2022 at 6:40 am, by admin

It’s time to rethink SEO growth. 

Not every strategy needs to start with a blog post regurgitating the same information across the top Google results and end with an agency begging for links. 

In the era of Google Ads becoming more expensive and organic discoverability becoming less effective, companies need to differentiate themselves in SEO. 

We must push the envelope and create something that has yet to be seen online. 

With creativity, thoughtfulness, and CSV magic, programmatic SEO can do this, resulting in millions of new customers per year.

This sounds impossible, but it’s not. 

In this guide, I will walk you through exactly how to get started with programmatic SEO.

What is programmatic SEO?

Programmatic SEO is the strategy of publishing unique, high-quality pages at scale using a template and a database. 

The goal of programmatic SEO is to create content with the same depth and thoroughness as a traditionally published article but repeated thousands, if not millions, of times at scale. A programmatic site can be as small as 200 pages and as large as 4 million. The key is ensuring each page serves a unique purpose in the search journey.

An oversimplification of programmatic SEO is building a database, connecting it to a template, and publishing thousands of pages. 

But if this is all you do, congratulations, you just created thousands of pieces of spam. 

Programmatically building content is a powerful tool that can exponentially grow a site or completely spam it. To become a true player in SEO growth, we must start thinking bigger – or should I say, we need to think “deeper” about our content. 

The benefits of programmatic SEO

Programmatic SEO unlocks traffic in the nooks and crannies of the internet. You no longer need to pick a handful of keywords, pay for written content, publish the post and hope it ranks for a cluster of terms. Now we can target entire categories and win all available searches in one template.

With programmatic SEO, businesses can:

• Win keywords at scale.
• Produce in-depth content quickly.
• Gain low engineering lift.
• Get “quicker” results – I use this delicately. Quickly, meaning results and challenges escalate quickly.

The drawbacks to programmatic SEO

As with any strategy, programmatic SEO also has its disadvantages, such as the following:

• Indexing is difficult.
• High risk – poor execution can hurt site growth.
• Limited by data resources.

Remember, if you’re trying to use programmatic SEO to trick Google or create People Also Ask (PAA) scraper sites, you’ll lose. 

Great programmatic content enhances content production through data depth and production efficiency.

What follows is a four-step guide to implementing a programmatic SEO structure.

Step 1: Keyword research for programmatic SEO

Instead of picking out a handful of keywords and paying for expensive bespoke content hubs, programmatic SEO aims to target entire directories of keywords under the same entity. 

Here are the steps in identifying your keywords.

Define your goals and intent

This will start similarly to a traditional SEO keyword analysis. Identify what category or topical group will drive business value. Hard stop. 

Driving traffic to show a cool graph to your client or boss means nothing if the traffic doesn’t move the business forward. 

Remember, business value can be as obvious as full conversions through transactional keywords or as light as a session hit to introduce your brand and possibly trigger a returning visit later in the research process. 

Here are resources to help complete a thorough opportunity analysis:

• Keyword research: A key element of SEO and content marketing
• 13 uses for keyword research to help you win in the search engines

Identify main topics

Start broadly. Once you’ve identified the target intent and goals, we need to define the category in which we want to rank.

Think of this as one step below a head term. We call this the “niche” of your site, driven by your product.

For example, “trucks” is a main head term and a broad topic. However, it’s not very intuitive and doesn’t have strong intent for a business-driving keyword, so we want to take it a step further. 

“Ford F-150” is a bit more specific but broad enough for our target.

Note that this is a specific brand search; however, that’s perfectly OK. We’ll not try to outrank Ford, but enhance the search experience for the Ford F-150 audience.

Identify modifiers and related terms

Ford F-150 is not our keyword, it is the vessel by which we will morph into a traffic machine. 

We do this by identifying questions surrounding the main topic. This is the jumping point from traditional content assets and programmatic building. 

If your main topic cannot be modified through repeatable searches, your product may not be viable for programmatic SEO. But if you find common questions surrounding a product, you can win traffic at scale.

• Timely: Questions that are impactful in a specific timeframe. 
  • Examples: 2022 F-150, stock prices at November 18 2022, inflation rates last year, sporting event scores from last week. 
• Comparable: Questions that create value by comparing to others. 
  • Examples: F-150 vs Chevy Silverado, housing costs in 2008, book reviews vs book categories, political affiliation by state, hobbies and interests by zodiac signs. 
• Hyper-specific: Questions that are only valuable within certain parameters and not the broader audience. Also known as the hyper long-tail. 
  • Examples: F-150 for sale in Marietta, Georgia, 1997 crime rates in Philadelphia PA, David Eckstein’s World Series batting average in 2006, answering public questions (i.e., Reddit and UGC).

For our F-150 example:

• F-150 vs Chevy Silverado
• F-150 under $50k
• F-150 in Marietta, Georgia

If you were using a traditional SEO system, you’d see three pages, potentially 100 if you’re doing the math in your head for states and other car comparisons and weeks to scale handwriting all of these pages. 

But for a programmatic approach, we have at least three templates and potentially thousands of pages to publish as soon as our template is ready. 

Look for signs that the keyword can be modified. In the example, we have three modifiers – “vs,” “under,” and “in.”

A quick way to find the keyword gold within your topic is to go back into your keyword aggregator and type in the [topic + modifier] (i.e., “F-150 vs” / “F-150 under” / “F-150 in”).

This gives you a better look at the opportunity size of each directory.

Take it one step further: identify other topics that can be modified by the same keywords. In our example: F-150 can be swapped out for Chevy Silverado, Ram 1500, and even targeting “Trucks” with additional modifiers could be viable for a strong site.  

Our keyword research should look like this:

Entity	Modifiers	Parameters
F-150	under	10-100 by ten
Chevy	in	Zip code
Ram	vs	All

The additional “parameters” column will define the level of detail you need. You can build this out for as deep or as wide as your product calls for. The more modifiers and entities you find, the more pages you’ll have. 

Target long-tail search

The sweet spot is a repeatable, mid- to long-tail keyword. 

In the example above, we very obviously made an ecommerce website, which is a great visual, but programmatic SEO as a growth strategy is most effective in targeting long-tail searches for informational intent keywords.

• Example: Weather in Philadelphia, PA today
• pSEO approach: Weather in {location} {date}

You might think this is impossible to drive meaningful traffic, but again, think deeper. 

By targeting specific ZIP codes and low-search volume towns, a relatively unknown site with a decent backlink profile wins an estimated 3,000,000 sessions* per month from these searches. *Estimated with traditional keyword research tools.

There’s no denying that Google is absorbing more of their own traffic. Keywords with multi-intents or hyper-specific keywords are usually pulled directly onto the SERP without needing a click.

As a business owner and growth strategist, you must define the value of each keyword group. 

Is showing within a featured snippet helpful for a brand introduction, even if it doesn’t result in a click?

If yes, go after it. If not, look for keywords that focus more on research and action.

The weather example may not be a viable strategy for a casual environmental blogger.

But if your product is a weather app, programmatically winning thousands, if not millions, of keyword variations that are extremely relevant to your targeted audience could exponentially increase app downloads. 

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Step 2: Building the content template

A programmatic template is the most important aspect of the build. 

This is where the art and science of SEO collide by stacking data points to create one cohesive, impactful piece of content that satisfies the user’s intent programmatically. 

The biggest difference between traditional SEO and programmatic strategies is that you’re building templates, not final pages. 

For SEOs, this means all of your traditionally bespoke updates must be done at scale and, yes, through engineering tickets. 

A page template should accomplish three goals:

Goal 1: Create value where the traditional content pipeline cannot

Sometimes, content is better when we stop trying to fit it into a blog post. 

Being able to programmatically compare pain points is a great use case to use a programmatic approach. 

G2 does this seamlessly by comparing prices, reviews, and related products directly on a category page, bringing additional value to the page that handwritten content cannot.

Goal 2: Go a mile deep into the query, but set boundaries

Consider your audience and Google search results (SERPs) when building your template.

Start by setting limits. If you’re building geo-based content, ask yourself when your content stops changing.

Does your offering change state? By county? By zip code? 

Building thousands of pages based on the same content are called gateway pages. They’re easy for Google to eliminate and extremely unhelpful to the visitor. 

The goal of a template is to dive extremely deep into a topic, and the result is scale. Not the other way around. 

Goal 3: Give access to information previously unavailable

Programmatic content can give access to data that was previously unobtainable because your template is built for a human, powered by a database. It becomes a storytelling medium. 

Election data today is so refined that we can visualize results down to the individual county. Is this new data? 

Of course not, but through visualizing an extremely large, overwhelming database into an easily consumed medium, we’ve created new value to the conversation. 

High-quality templates	Low-quality templates
Answers multiple questions	Answers 1 obvious question
Unique data points	Scrapes other websites
More page value than traditional pipeline	Provides little value but can scale quickly
Each page is uniquely valuable	Gateway pages created to trick Google

A great template will check most, if not all boxes. 

Be warned – low-quality templates checking only one box are spam, and Google will quickly drop them from the index.

Step 3: Connect to a database

Your database can be any source of information used to build content. 

It can be as simple as a CSV export from a government data source or as complex as a proprietary data warehouse updated by the second. 

The key is building a database that meets the goals set by your template. 

And don’t let the term database scare you. You don’t need to be a data scientist to find the right data. 

Being in tune with your audience’s needs and potentially a few skills in Excel are what’s important. (You can always outsource if you don’t have Excel or Python skills).

Ian Nuttall, creator of Niche Site Metrics, built a depository of where to find all publicly available data.

But it doesn’t only need to be open-source data. 

• Listen to your customers. 
• Build a repository of reviews. 
• Group support ticket questions by topic. 
• Track industry prices over time and by geography. 

Build your database around transforming your product or brand into a uniquely useful resource. 

Step 4: Publish and get indexed

Your first challenge in successfully driving traffic with programmatic SEO is indexing because everything happens at scale. 

Don’t be alarmed when you do everything by programmatic SEO best practices and your indexing is less than 30%. 

Programmatic pages will be similar in nature, kicking most pages into Discovered - currently not indexed or Crawled - currently not indexed.

If you publish more content at once, more pages start in the abyss of discovered or crawled but not indexed. 

Don’t panic. Take a hard look at the published templates and ask yourself, are you bringing something new to the SERP? 

If yes, move forward with these three steps

Build a better internal link structure

Internal links for programmatic SEO are 10x more important than traditional editorial pages. 

You are building hundreds, thousands, or even millions of pages from one directory and will need to build context between each related page.  

Create link silos from Directory > Leaf pages. Hardcoding the same 20 links into every page will be disregarded by the visitor and Google, rendering it useless. 

Just as you would for traditional SEO, dedicate time to contextual linking and work with your engineer to set the correct logic for each individual page.

If you forget internal linking, you’ll create thousands of orphaned pages and increase the number of dead ends on your site. These will almost entirely be seen as non-influential pages and may never be crawled. 

Create a robust sitemap structure

Programmatic SEO sitemaps are as important as robust internal linking. The maximum list of URLs on a robots.txt sitemap is about 50k. For larger sites, you’ll need dozens of sitemaps and sitemap indexes. 

Structure your robots.txt file as you would your site structure. If possible, build a sitemap for each individual directory. This will categorize sitemaps by subject rather than publishing date and allows Google to index each category more easily.  

Once it’s set, make sure you force crawl each individual sitemap (yes, even if you have hundreds of sitemaps) two times or until Google has returned to the page multiple times.

Create HTML sitemaps

These are not your HTML sitemaps from 2009. Identify each directory page and use it as a linking guide for every “milestone” page. 

For a site with millions of leaf pages, you won’t be able to link to each individual, but you can target Category > Subcategory links. 

This allows your directories to function as link hubs and creates an easy flow from Homepage > Category > Subcategory that enhances your internal link structure. 

To recap, below is a repeatable process for implementing a programmatic SEO structure.

• Identify a repeatable search opportunity.
• Build a diverse content template.
• Build and connect a robust database.
• Implement internal links into templates.
• Create robots.txt sitemap structure.
• Publish.
• Optimize and repeat.

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Microsoft now requires verification for UK Financial Services advertisers

Written on December 13, 2022 at 6:40 am, by admin

Starting early this year, Microsoft will allow only advertisers duly authorized by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to present regulated financial promotions in the UK. Advertisers will be required to provide proof of authorization by the UK FCA to present Financial Promotion Ads or specify if they’re either 1) a non-financial services advertiser who may target consumers seeking financial services, such as e-commerce platforms or 2) government entities such as authorities or regulators under the “.gov.uk” domain.

Why we care. If you live in the UK or advertise for a UK financial services company, you’ll need to start the verification process here.

Keep in mind. Microsoft says to keep the following into consideration:

• These requirements are in addition to the Advertiser Identity Verification requirements laid out by Microsoft as part of its safety measures to protect consumers, advertisers, and publishers.
• Failure to complete this verification process will result in ads being blocked from serving in the UK—the account will continue to perform as before with respect to non-Financial Services Ads and in markets outside of the UK.

Dig deeper. Read the announcement on the Microsoft blog here.

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Search Engine Land celebrates its 16th birthday 

Written on December 12, 2022 at 2:38 am, by admin

Search Engine Land celebrates its Sweet 16 today.

While most of the original team from 2006 has moved on, the mission of Search Engine Land remains nearly the same as it has been since day 1.

As explained by founding editor Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land was created to be:

• A place where you can keep up with what’s happening in the search space.
• A community.
• An entire new world revolving around the important tools of search engines, a world that continues to grow and be shaped, with such a huge impact on society and our daily lives.

There’s a lot to look forward to in 2023.

But first, let’s take a look back on the past year of Search Engine Land, give some thanks to those who have helped make this year a success, and tease a few things you can expect from us over the next year.

Thank you for reading!

If you’re still reading this, thank you! Yes, you!

Every day, our mission is to bring you the latest news and information as it happens, as well as useful guides and insights to help you thrive and advance in your career, navigate the ever-changing search landscape and understand what’s coming next.

Hopefully, you found our news coverage and articles helpful over the past year. 

And just as a reminder: if you’d like all the latest search news, analysis and intelligence in your inbox, make sure to subscribe to Search Engine Land’s newsletter.

Thanks to the Search Engine Land team

Search Engine Land has a small team. But as the late Steve Jobs once said, “A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.”

And I truly we believe we have those A+ players here. 

• Barry Schwartz. Barry is a legend – he’s been writing on Search Engine Land since the beginning and covering search for an astounding 19 years. He’s written a ridiculous number of news articles (somewhere around 40,000), documenting all the latest updates and developments in our space. His work ethic is beyond impressive and it’s been an honor to work with him this year. 
• Nicole Farley: Nicole has been a great addition to the team. I was impressed by her when we first met a couple of years ago. Since joining the team, Nicole has well far exceeded my expectations and does a fantastic job staying on top of all the latest developments in the world of PPC.
• Angel Niñofranco: I was beyond excited to have Angel join the team and to work with her for a second time. Fun fact: Angel now has been my first hire at two different companies. Angel is a truly excellent editor and helps make sure our SME content is worthy of your time and attention. 
• Kathy Bushman: It’s been great working with Kathy on the SMX events. Her focus never wavers from what’s most important: making sure we deliver top-level content (and experience to match) to everyone who attends our events. I’m already looking forward to thinking about the agendas for SMX Advanced and Next in 2023 – both will be here much sooner than we think!
• Sarah Slifko-Camarra & Karen DeWeese: I can’t thank them enough for all their help in getting our SME program established and organized. Plus, Sarah and Karen do some great work behind the scenes with SMX.
• Marc Sirkin: Marc has been a huge ally and sounding board for starting to make some big and much-needed changes to our website and SEO strategy. 
• Chris Elwell: I truly appreciate Chris for his leadership, for always challenging us to be better, and for the thoughtfulness in how he approaches business decisions and processes. He has truly created a great team and company. (And, in case you didn’t know, he has been a key figure in the development of our entire industry. Watch this video interview he did with Barry in 2020 to learn more.)

There are so many other fantastic humans who are part of the Third Door Media team who I haven’t mentioned. Just know, even if I didn’t mention you, I appreciate you and all you do to help make our company successful.  

Gone, but not forgotten

It has undoubtedly been a year of change for Search Engine Land. I joined Search Engine Land in January. And Nicole and Angel joined around halfway through 2022.

We also bid farewell to some team members. So cue the “In Memoriam” theme for:

• Henry Powderly, former vice president of content for Third Door Media, the publisher of Search Engine Land and MarTech (August 2018 – June 2022)
• George Nguyen, former editor (June 2020 – March 2022)
• Corey Patterson, former editor (November 2021 – June 2022)

Top 3 highlights of 2022

Despite some challenges, I’d say it’s safe to call 2022 an overall success for Search Engine Land.  

SMX Advanced and SMX Next

Both shows had the highest audience ratings in the history of Third Door Media. More than 8,500 search marketers signed up for both events. 

While those numbers are great, what really mattered to me was the feedback we received from people who invested their time in our events. It was overwhelmingly positive for the speakers, content and experience.

It was also great to have Google back at SMX, with keynotes featuring Hyung-Jin Kim and Ginny Marvin.

Plus, the 2022 Search Engine Land Awards revealed some of the truly great work going on in our industry. I can’t wait to see what successes y’all have over the next several months – so make sure to enter next year.

SME program relaunch

One of my top priorities was launching our Subject Matter Expert (SME) program. 

A huge thank you to all of our excellent SMEs for all the great content and insights you shared in 2022. We’ll be highlighting the top 10 most popular SEO and PPC columns of the year – so check back Dec. 29-30, when those will be revealed. I look forward to reading even more great advice and insights from you in 2023! 

Speaking of 2023 – I’ll be looking for new contributors very soon. More details to come. But if you’re interested in becoming a contributor on Search Engine Land, 2023 may just be your year.

Traffic and audience growth

I won’t lie – not that it’s any secret – Search Engine Land has its share of SEO messes to clean up, including a fairly disastrous “consolidation” of categories that was handled with a blowtorch instead of a scalpel. Most of that SEO damage has, thankfully, been dealt with.

Despite our long SEO to-do list, traffic and audience growth are trending in the right direction:

• Sessions – up 30%
• Pageviews – up 25%
• Users – up 16%
• Organic search traffic – up 22%
• Direct traffic – up 34%

What’s next for Search Engine Land? 

We’re already looking ahead to 2023. You can expect us to continue providing breaking news coverage and insights on all things search. 

Plus, we’ll be debuting a couple of new regular features we hope you’ll like. 

Also on our to-do list: some long overdue updates to our popular SEO and PPC periodic tables, and accompanying guides.

And save the dates for our SMX events:

• SMX Advanced: June 13-14.
• SMX Next: Nov. 15-16.

And there’s plenty more to come.

On behalf of everyone at Search Engine Land and Third Door Media, I wish you a great rest of 2022 and a successful and healthy 2023.

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Content ideas may be coming to Google Search Console

Written on December 9, 2022 at 6:38 pm, by admin

Google Search Console is experimenting with a new feature named “content ideas.” Content ideas give the content creator, publisher, SEO, webmaster, etc., some tips and advice on what new topics they can write about on their site.

Experimental feature. This feature is not live for me in my verified Search Console profiles, but Nicolas Ockier noticed it and posted about it on Mastodon sharing this screenshot:

Looks like Question Hub. This looks a lot like the Google Question Hub that launched in the US around two years ago.

It gives you topic ideas that you can write about and publish on your website.

What is Question Hub? Google says, “Question Hub is a tool that enables creators to create richer content by leveraging unanswered questions. Question Hub collects these unanswered user questions and surfaces them to bloggers, writers, and content creators like you.”

It is basically a way for Google to enable searchers to tell it that the search results provided are not answering the query. Then, Google takes those questions and feeds them to publishers, who, in turn, can create content that does answer the query.

Content ideas seem similar.

Why we care. Creating content ideas can sometimes be a struggle for writers, which may help content creators with that process. At the same time, this gives Google more content to crawl, index, and potentially rank in its search results. Check your Search Console, it might have this feature, if not, go play with Question Hub until then.

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JavaScript rendering and indexing: Cautionary tales and how to avoid them

Written on December 9, 2022 at 6:38 pm, by admin

I recently read Ziemek Bucko’s fascinating article, Rendering Queue: Google Needs 9X More Time To Crawl JS Than HTML, on the Onely blog.

Bucko described a test they did showing significant delays by Googlebot following links in JavaScript-reliant pages compared to links in plain-text HTML. 

While it isn’t a good idea to rely on only one test like this, their experience matches up with my own. I have seen and supported many websites relying too much on JavaScript (JS) to function properly. I expect I’m not alone in that respect.

My experience is that JavaScript-only content can take longer to get indexed compared to plain HTML. 

I recall several instances of fielding phone calls and emails from frustrated clients asking why their stuff wasn’t showing up in search results. 

In all but one case, the challenge appeared to be because the pages were built on a JS-only or mostly JS platform.

Before we go further, I want to clarify that this is not a “hit piece” on JavaScript. JS is a valuable tool. 

Like any tool, however, it’s best used for tasks other tools cannot do. I’m not against JS. I’m against using it where it doesn’t make sense.

But there are other reasons to consider judiciously using JS instead of relying on it for everything. 

Here are some tales from my experience to illustrate some of them.

1. Text? What text?!

A site I supported was relaunched with an all-new design on a platform that relied heavily on JavaScript. 

Within a week of the new site going live, organic search traffic plummeted to near zero, causing an understandable panic among the clients.

A quick investigation revealed that besides the site being considerably slower (see the next tales), Google’s live page test showed the pages to be blank. 

My team did an evaluation and surmised that it would take Google some time to render the pages. After 2-3 more weeks, though, it was apparent that something else was going on. 

I met with the site’s lead developer to puzzle through what was happening. As part of our conversation, they shared their screen to show me what was happening on the back end. 

That’s when the “aha!” moment hit. As the developer stepped through the code line by line in their console, I noticed that each page’s text was loading outside the viewport using a line of CSS but was pulled into the visible frame by some JS. 

This was intended to make for a fun animation effect where the text content “slid” into view. However, because the page rendered so slowly in the browser, the text was already in view when the page’s content was finally displayed. 

The actual slide-in effect was not visible to users. I guessed Google couldn’t pick up on the slide-in effect and did not see the content. 

Once that effect was removed and the site was recrawled, the traffic numbers started to recover.

2. It’s just too slow

This could be several tales, but I’ll summarize several in one. JS platforms like AngularJS and React are fantastic for rapidly developing applications, including websites. 

They are well-suited for sites needing dynamic content. The challenge comes in when websites have a lot of static content that is dynamically driven. 

Several pages on one website I evaluated scored very low in Google’s PageSpeed Insights (PSI) tool. 

As I dug into it using the Coverage report in Chrome’s Developer Tools across those pages, I found that 90% of the downloaded JavaScript wasn’t used, accounting for over 1MB of code. 

When you examine this from the Core Web Vitals side, that accounted for nearly 8 seconds of blocking time as all the code has to be downloaded and run in the browser. 

Talking to the development team, they pointed out that if they front-load all the JavaScript and CSS that will ever be needed on the site, it will make subsequent page visits all that much faster for visitors since the code will be in the browser caches. 

While the former developer in me agreed with that concept, the SEO in me could not accept how Google’s apparent negative perception of the site’s user experience was likely to degrade traffic from organic search. 

Unfortunately, in my experience, SEO often loses out to a lack of desire to change things once they have been launched.

3. This is the slowest site ever!

Similar to the previous tale comes a site I recently reviewed that scored zero on Google’s PSI. Up to that time, I’d never seen a zero score before. Lots of twos, threes and a one, but never a zero.

I’ll give you three guesses about what happened to that site’s traffic and conversions, and the first two don’t count!

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Sometimes, it’s more than just JavaScript

To be fair, excessive CSS, images that are far larger than needed, and autoplay video backgrounds can also slow download times and cause indexing issues.

I wrote a bit about those in two previous articles:

• 5 ways content helps create a better user experience
• Bad website design: Bad for SEO, UX and business

For example, in my second tale, the sites involved also tended to have excessive CSS that was not used on most pages.

So, what is the SEO to do in these situations?

Solutions to problems like this involve close collaboration between SEO, development, and client or other business teams. 

Building a coalition can be delicate and involves giving and taking. As an SEO practitioner, you must work out where compromises can and cannot be made and move accordingly. 

Start from the beginning

It’s best to build SEO into a website from the start. Once a site is launched, changing or updating it to meet SEO requirements is much more complicated and expensive.

Work to get involved in the website development process at the very beginning when requirements, specifications, and business goals are set. 

Try to get search engine bots as user stories early in the process so teams can understand their unique quirks to help get content spidered indexed quickly and efficiently. 

Be a teacher

Part of the process is education. Developer teams often need to be informed about the importance of SEO, so you need to tell them. 

Put your ego aside and try to see things from the other teams’ perspectives. 

Help them learn the importance of implementing SEO best practices while understanding their needs and finding a good balance between them. 

Sometimes it’s helpful to hold a lunch-and-learn session and bring some food. Sharing a meal during discussions helps break down walls – and it doesn’t hurt as a bit of a bribe either. 

Some of the most productive discussions I’ve had with developer teams have been over a few slices of pizza.

For existing sites, get creative

You’ll have to get more creative if a site has already launched. 

Frequently, the developer teams have moved on to other projects and may not have time to circle back and “fix” things that are working according to the requirements they received. 

There is also a good chance that clients or business owners will not want to invest more money in another website project. This is especially true if the website in question was recently launched.

One possible solution is server-side rendering. This offloads the client-side work and can speed things up significantly. 

A variation of this is combining server-side rendering caching the plain-text HTML content. This can be an effective solution for static or semi-static content. 

It also saves a lot of overhead on the server side because pages are rendered only when changes are made or on a regular schedule instead of each time the content is requested.

Other alternatives that can help but may not totally solve speed challenges are minification and compression. 

Minification removes the empty spaces between characters, making files smaller. GZIP compression can be used for downloaded JS and CSS files.

Minification and compression don’t resolve blocking time challenges. But, at least they reduce the time needed to pull down the files themselves.

Google and JavaScript indexing: What gives?

For a long time, I believed that at least part of the reason Google was slower in indexing JS content was the higher cost of processing it. 

It seemed logical based on the way I’ve heard this described: 

• A first pass grabbed all the plain text.
• A second pass was needed to grab, process, and render JS.

I surmised that the second step would require more bandwidth and processing time.

I asked Google’s John Mueller on Twitter if this was a fair assumption, and he gave an interesting answer. 

From what he sees, JS pages are not a huge cost factor. What is expensive in Google’s eyes is respidering pages that are never updated. 

In the end, the most important factor to them was the relevance and usefulness of the content.

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Airbnb’s search marketing shift: Should advertisers follow suit?

Written on December 9, 2022 at 6:38 pm, by admin

A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that Airbnb’s “strategy of slashing advertising spending, investing in brand marketing and lessening its reliance on search-engine marketing is continuing to pay off.”

This remark has sparked discussions among many advertisers, wondering if a similar strategy may work for them. 

In 2019, Airbnb started to move budget away from search marketing in favor of broader marketing initiatives.

The pandemic accelerated the shift, with video and social media picking up the largest share of digital spend in 2021, according to data gathered from Semrush and Pathmatics.

In Q4 2021, The company then expanded its digital strategy into OTT and CTV, further reducing the budget share for PPC.

With CPCs rising across performance media channels, advertisers are left wondering if moving away from performance marketing channels is the right move. 

But before you take a similar leap, let’s look at three key considerations. 

1. What external forces are impacting your business? 

The pandemic played a considerable part in Airbnb’s strategy shift.

The company dropped its marketing spend from April 2020 through November 2020, when it reappeared with a strong social media presence. 

Then in December, Airbnb reminded customers with video ads that the brand will be there when people are ready to travel.

Consumer behavior changed, and Airbnb needed to employ a medium that would reassure and inspire trust. What better way to do that than with video? 

It’s critical to be aligned with the external forces impacting your marketing mix. 

Are you creating a new category? Or trying to change consumer behavior? 

If so, a shift to brand-heavy advertising may make good sense. 

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2. Have you reached a tipping point?

Ninety percent of Airbnb’s traffic comes directly to the site. Their market share in the space is nearly 20%, according to Second Measure.

Airbnb had already reached its tipping point. Its category was well-established, and it was a leader in that category. 

Instead of using performance media to drive new customers, they could use it as strategic levers for supply and demand.

Think of their brand awareness spend as the large workhorse and performance media as fine-tuning. 

Before deciding where to spend your marketing dollars, know where you’re coming. 

Are you the leader in your category? Are the majority of your visitors coming directly to your site? 

If so, it makes sense to place a heavier weight on brand advertising and rely on performance media for fine-tuning. 

But if you need to acquire more customers to reach a tipping point, consider a heavier performance media strategy. 

3. Do you have wasted spend? 

Finally, from the outside, it’s difficult to say how much of Airbnb’s performance marketing spend was wasted.

But surveys from Rakuten Marketing and Commerce Signals indicate that marketers routinely waste 25-40% of their marketing budget. 

Simply cutting this wasted spend and reusing the dollars for broader marketing initiatives may give advertisers similar effects to what Airbnb saw. 

Evaluate your existing performance marketing dollars to find the wasted spend hiding in plain sight. Online audit tools can help, as well as audits from marketing agencies. 

Rethink your marketing mix based on your unique situation

It’s worth reemphasizing that Airbnb still spends ~50% of its budget on performance media.

So while their mix shifted from the previous 80%, the company still heavily relies on performance media to help balance supply and demand. 

As advertisers look at whether to move budget to brand awareness, the roles of marketing channels should be reevaluated.

Allowing each channel to play to its superpowers can create a wonderful symbiotic relationship within your marketing mix. 

So if you are considering a strategy shift similar to Airbnb, it’s important to think critically about your business before making the move. 

Think about your category, consumer behavior, and market position. Finally, evaluate any wasted spend.

And if you’re ready to take the plunge, remember to test, measure, evaluate and repeat. 

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